Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami and his Turkish counterpart, Nurettin Canikli, held a telephone conversation on Tuesday to discuss the latest developments pertaining to mutual relations and regional issues.

In Aleppo the Liwa al-Quds Brigade rallied in protest to Trump’s decision on Jerusalem. As the full reaction to Trump’s decision develops, our forces will end up surrounded by hostiles with no friends in sight. As Magnier surmises, Trump may be setting our troops up for a repeat of the events of 1983 Beirut. Now that would be a punch in the mouth.

Well informed sources have said the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp Brigadier General Haj Qassem Soleimani sent a formal verbal message, via Russia, to the head of the US forces command in Syria, advising him to pull out all US forces to the last soldier “or the doors of hell will open up”.

After decades of waste, overpayments, trillions of missing or improperly accounted for dollars, and most recently losing track of 44,000 US soldiers, the Pentagon is about to undergo its first audit in history conducted by 2,400 auditors from independent public accounting firms to conduct reviews across the Army, Navy, Air Force and more - followed by annual audits going forward.

"An American F-22 fighter actively prevented the Russian pair of Su-25 attack aircraft from carrying out a combat mission to destroy the Daesh stronghold in the suburbs of the city of Mayadin in the airspace over the western bank of the Euphrates River on November 23. The F-22 aircraft fired off heat flares and released brake shields with permanent maneuvering, imitating an air battle," Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry`s spokesperson said on Saturday.

The lack of media interest makes it seem like a crisis unfolding in slow motion. But that is only because outrage and compassion are now meant to be weaponised when they can be useful in justifying imperialist interventions. For the Yemeni people the agony is real and there is no escaping it.

On November 17, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the potential sale of 208 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, 16 launchers, four radars, software and other associated products and services to the government of Poland for $10.5 billion, or about 37 billion zloties. Poland has allocated just 30 billion zloties for its missile defense modernization program.

India might find itself in trouble trying to maintain and upgrade its aging Dassault Mirage fleet of fighter jets as the two responsible bodies point fingers at each other demanding the other one should pay.

For the first time in its 70-year history, the US Department of Defense (DoD) will be undertaking an agency-wide audit. Pentagon officials announced that a massive audit involving thousands of inspectors will be checking every nook and cranny of the gargantuan agency starting later in December.

The Russian Armed forces have fulfilled their objective of destroying the military forces of the Daesh terrorist group in Syria, the head of the Russian General Staff Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said on Thursday.

The Russian General Staff has declared the liberation of Syria from ISIS terrorists, stating that all territories previously under terrorist control were liberated in the final push by the Syrian Army.

More details have emerged concerning the reported December 3rd firing of a cruise missile by Yemeni Houthi rebels toward a nuclear power plant under construction in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

“Today, six Tu-22M3 long-haul bombers that took off from an airfield in Russia delivered an airstrike on Islamic State terrorists’ targets near the settlement of Al-Sayal in the province of Deir ez-Zor,” the ministry said. “All the targets were destroyed.”

A US military agency is investing $100m in genetic extinction technologies that could wipe out malarial mosquitoes, invasive rodents or other species, emails released under freedom of information rules show.

"...the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex isn’t just a shadowy cabal manipulating policies against the will of the American people... Instead, the military and the vast economic network it feeds presents a far more `complex` issue that involves millions of self-interested Americans just as Eisenhower predicted..."

I am often asked if the US and Russia will go to war with each other. I always reply that they are already at war. Not a war like WWII, but a war nonetheless. This war is, at least for the time being, roughly 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic.

Washington’s plan to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ultimately failed. Now Lebanon seems to be in the cross-hairs with tensions between Israel and Hezbollah on the same level that led to the 2006 Lebanon war.

“The YPG is armed and as the coalition stops operations then obviously you don’t need that, you need security, you need police forces, that is local forces, that is people who make certain that ISIS doesn’t come back,” Mattis told journalists on a military plane en route to Cairo...

According to the US-led coalition fighting ISIS, some 400 US Marines and accompanying artillery have been ordered back to the United States, with their involvement in the capture of the Syrian city of Raqqa over.

The U.S. Navy (and to be frank, the whole U.S. military) is living in a state of total denial. In the next great powers war, or perhaps even in a conflict with a mid-tier power like Iran, at least one of our aircraft carriers will sink to the bottom of the sea. That means thousands of lives could be lost—and there would be very little we could do to stop it.

The deployment of US Special Operations Forces in Europe is never in spotlight but it is rapidly increasing. There can be no other purpose than acquisition of capability to deliver strikes deep into Russia’s territory.

In October, 2016, two Reuters’ reporters published an exclusive, under the headline: “As Saudis bombed Yemen, U.S. worried about legal blowback.”
The reporters, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, revealed that legal experts at the US State Department had warned the White House that the United States could be charged with war crimes in connection with the Saudi Air Force bombing campaign in Yemen.

Hypersonic weapons are the at the centre of the next arms race between the US, China and Russia.
And it appears Moscow have taken an early lead as they boast the weapons can beat NATO missile interceptors.

Europe is not a threat to Iran, but just in case it allies itself with the US and Israel and becomes one, Tehran has enough technical capabilities to increase the range of its missiles, the commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps has warned.

Mohamed Bin Salman’s (MBS) royal Saudi coup is still in the making and its stories of mystery and intrigue are unfolding..."In his reliance on Blackwater however, MbS is achieving a more guaranteed short term objective. However, this policy can backfire very violently..."

One of the most advanced Royal Navy warships, which cost around £1 billion, had to abort its mission in the Persian Gulf and return to the UK. This leaves the country without a seaworthy destroyer as five other vessels are already undergoing maintenance.

The US plans to keep its troops in Syria long after the defeat of ISIS – the goal used to justify their illegal presence in the first place – because the Syrian government and its ally Iran would “win” if they were withdrawn, the Washington Post reported.

In an incident reminiscent of the two accidents earlier this year involving Navy destroyers deployed in the Pacific, a Navy plane carrying 11 military personnel crashed Wednesday in the Pacific near Okinawa. Eight of the passengers have been rescued but three are still missing.

Yunus Soner, deputy chairman of Turkey`s Vatan Party, told Sputnik that his country`s withdrawal from the Western alliance is virtually inevitable.
On Monday, Yalcin Topcu, a key advisor to the president, urged lawmakers to reconsider Turkey`s membership in the defense bloc.

Three service members working for the White House Communications Agency have been reassigned from their jobs amid an investigation into alleged improper contact with foreign women during President Trump`s tour through Asia earlier this month, a report Tuesday said...

All U.S. service members in Okinawa have been restricted to their bases and residences and banned from drinking alcohol in response to a fatal traffic accident in the prefectural capital over the weekend, U.S. Forces in Japan announced Monday....Crimes and accidents committed by U.S. military members stationed there continue to fuel that sentiment.

The Pentagon claims that its air war against ISIS is one of the most accurate in history and that it is so careful in who it targets that the 14,000 US airstrikes in Iraq have killed just 89 civilians.

"If the idiots in the intelligence community expect us to believe them after all the crap they have told us (like WMD’s in Iraq and “no we don’t collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”) then they need to give clear proof of what they say. So far, they have failed to prove anything."

Russian strategic bombers destroyed on Friday command sites, gatherings, and armored vehicles for Daesh (ISIS) terrorist organization in the vicinity of al-Boukamal city in the countryside of Deir Ezzor.

Defense News reported that analysts have expressed worry that Turkey operating both the F-35 and the S-400 could compromise the security of the F-35s, as the data collected by the S-400 may expose the F-35`s vulnerabilities.

According to a new study by Brown University’s Watson Institute, the real cost of the US wars since 9/11 is three times the Pentagon’s estimate. Some $5.6 trillion have been spent on the endless global war. The total costs of 16 years of war are even higher, and they extend beyond just finance.

As Amazon continues to entrench itself as the nation’s commissary, huge government supply deals like the $53 billion Pentagon-Amazon procurement deal Congress is set to authorize leave little room for competitors and raise the specter of government-coddled monopoly.

Not sure where your tax dollars are going?
On Tuesday, the U.S. Representatives passed a Pentagon budget that called for $700 billion in defense spending—more than what even the Trump administration had asked for, and tens of billions more than the current defense spending caps....

Despite Saudi Arabia’s tough rhetoric and brutal assault against its neighbor, Yemen (the poorest country in the region), the unfortunate reality is that Saudi Arabia is not the strongman it has hopelessly painted itself to be. This isn’t conjecture or an attempt to needlessly bolster and promote regional rivals such as Iran, as has become the trend among anti-imperialist commentators.

There are two myths which are deeply imprinted in the minds of most US Americans which are extremely dangerous and which can result in a war with Russia.
The first myth is the myth of US military superiority.
The second myth is the myth of US invulnerability.
I believe that it is therefore crucial to debunk these myths before they end up costing us millions of lives and untold suffering.

The US Army has taken a deeply controversial decision to allow individuals with a history of clinically documented insanity, as well as those with records of drug addiction and alcoholism to sign up as new recruits. The move comes as the US Army is struggling to meet its recruiting target for the new year.

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.

SAFE ZONES IN SYRIA: While cautioning that the war against the Islamic State is not yet over, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the key to bringing peace to Syria is to broaden existing “de-escalation zones” in the war-torn country, while pressing all sides to move ahead with a U.N.-brokered peace process in Geneva. Until that happens, the relatively small number of U.S. troops won’t be going anywhere, Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday.

Since the inauguration of US President D. J. Trump in January 2017, along with his contingent of generals, Washington has rattled its nuclear and other military sabers in most every direction, threatening to totally destroy North Korea, ramping up weapons deliveries to Syrian opposition groups, scaling up AFRICOM military actions, sending its naval fleets in every imaginable direction from the South China Sea to the Baltic, building up troops along the borders to Russia, threatening Iran…

“Do you think his assessment is accurate?” was the subject line of an email I got from a good friend recently. The email referred to the article by Paul Craig Roberts “One Day Tomorrow Won’t Arrive” which claimed that “the US military is now second class compared to the Russian military“. The article then went on to list a number of Russian weapons systems which were clearly superior to their US counterparts (when those even existed). My reply was short "Basically yes."

"High on the ministerial agenda is improving infrastructure for warmaking, including upgraded roads and bridges, facilitating movement of troops, weapons and equipment. So-called `deterrence for collective defense` is code language for possible offensive operations. The private sector in NATO countries have an `important role to play`..."

“The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has deployed thousands of air, sea and land personnel to the Lebanese border for its biggest military drill in almost two decades, a show of strength designed to [intimidate] Hezbollah and Iran even as their power grows in neighbouring Syria.”

France is set to sell a number of warships to the United Arab Emirates, French President Emmanuel Macron announced in Abu Dhabi, during a high-profile Middle East tour that also involved a surprise stop in Saudi Arabia.

The sale of UK-made bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia has leapt by almost 500 percent, according to new data from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). British munitions have been used in the Saudi-led coalition war in Yemen, contributing to the humanitarian catastrophe there.